What’s new about the SAP ONE Support launchpad?

SAP has a strong track record of offering a central entry point that its customers can use to find the support and materials they need, whether they’re searching for SAP Notes, managing license keys, or looking for software downloads and SAP Knowledge-Based Articles – such as How-To Guides. The foundation was laid with SAP Service Marketplace in 1997 and extended with the launch of the SAP Support Portal in 2004. Both portals were designed toprovide information and access to all service and support applications ensuring customer-specific SAP solutions run smoothly and without disruption. With 1.8 million registered Support users, better known as “S-users,” the SAP Support Portal (support.sap.com) is the third most-visited SAP website after scn.sap.com and sap.com.

So far, so good, you might say, you’re a long-standing SAP customer, that is. Often, customers that joined the SAP fold after an acquisition – like Ariba, Concur, and Fieldglass –have not enjoyed quite so direct a route to SAP’s service and support offerings. Some continue to have their own dedicatedsupport portal. The SAP ONE Support launchpad is set to change all that

That’s because, true to its guiding principle of Run Simple, SAP is committed to reducing the complexity of its support and service experience too, and is currently developing the new SAP ONE Support launchpad in close cooperation with customers as part of the SAP ONE Support program. The SAP ONE Support launchpad will consolidate all the current access routes to offer a single entry point for all service and support requests and for all SAP solutions.

What are the benefits?

Simplicityand user-friendliness are key characteristics of the next generation of service and support applications. And new technologies like SAP HANA, SAP HANA Cloud Platform, and SAP Fiori allow these applications to profit from real-time computing, rapid innovation cycles, unified user interaction, and integration of mobile end devices.In the new SAP ONE Support launchpad, all the required information is presented in visual form. With the help of specific KPIs, determined in real time based on SAP HANA, users can see at a glance which actions to take for their particular software solutions. The KPIs are presented in graphical form or as a numeric value.The key benefits of the SAP ONE Support launchpad are:

Why a new SAP ONE Support launchpad?

There are currently two clearly discernible trends in today’s software market: Firstly, the number of hybrid software landscapes incorporating a mix of on-premise and cloud products is increasing. These either represent an interim step in a company’s transformation to an entirely cloud-based solution landscape or a strategy that involves enhancing an existing on-premise deployment with cloud solutions. Secondly, the increased use of mobile devices is hiking demand for simple and intuitive applications. Users are increasingly taking center stage in software solutions and they expect to enjoy the same level of functionality whatever device they happen to be using. The SAP ONE Support launchpad is SAP’s response to these trends.

The next article will feature the concepts on which the SAP ONE Support launchpad applications are built – including personalization, user-centricity, and “Know me – Guide Me – Help me” and the users’ benefits.